This is all so very camp
Published:
July 22, 2013 at 2:26pm
If Norman Lowell carries on this way, he’s going to open himself up to the very sort of talk that would horrify him: that he’s a repressed homosexual.
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F’daqqa wahda qed inhossni butch
“Iridu jeqirdu r-razza bajda”, he says of the media and NGOs. Does he have a mirror at home? He looks like a repressed North African homosexual.
Daphne, can I have your email address please? many thanks in advance.
[Daphne – [email protected]]
Meanwhile, astride his trusty stead, Rocinante, Don Alfredo Santo is vainly looking for some windmills:
http://www.independent.com.mt/articles/2013-07-22/news/black-economy-increased-after-introduction-of-vat-sant-2134245376/
Probably is worried about an economy run by blacks.
He speaks about Maltese identity and instead of speaking in Maltese he includes Italian and English sentences.
I met Norman Lowell years ago, before he went public. I always thought he looked and sounded gay. Not that it’s a problem, except apparently for him. The problem is that he’s a nutcase.
I also met Norman Lowell. He is neither gay nor mentally ill. In fact he has a first class brain. He worked in banking before he became a full time artist and writer, and astutely managed to secure his financial future. Perhaps Daphne can do a bit of research on the case.
[Daphne – While working for Mid Med Bank, he was suspected of embezzling a very large sum of money. The bank did not have enough proof to sack him, nor was there enough proof for criminal proceedings. He was, as I recall, paid off. This was around 1992. I was then associate editor at The Malta Independent, and he rang me asking for a job. I told him (politely) that none were available, then I turned to my colleague as said in amazement, “Can you believe that? Hasn’t Mid Med just got rid of him for sucking up a stash of cash?”]
Baxxter, your standards are slipping. Norman Lowell is a first class jerk with pretensions beyond his very limited potential. His ‘art’ is rubbish and the prices a joke. As for his writing, well, if you’ve actually read what he writes, then you’re just being sarcastic.
No one with a first class brain would camp out monthly for moonlit grills with a ghoulish gathering of trolls, misfits and racist bitches.
Hardly the actions of a deranged madman.
[Daphne – Not all mental problems can be equated with madness or derangement. Serial killers, rapists and those who violate children quite obviously have a serious psychiatric problem, but it does not follow that they are necessarily insane. Most are considered sane enough to stand trial. Norman Lowell wakes up every morning, washes himself, feeds himself, gets dressed and goes out to interact with others. He is clearly not deranged in that he keeps himself going. But it does not follow from this that he is psychiatrically sound.]
The problem with Lowell is not him. It’s the PN. It’s the complete absence of a strong Liberal Right. Politics abhors a vacuum. I’ll probably be chided for repeating my mantra, but the Extreme Right flourishes wherever the Right is weak.
There is no Liberal Right in Malta. There is Catholic Socialism (PN) and then there is Nasserist Fascism (MLP).
Actually, there was a Liberal Right once upon a time. There was Strickland’s party. But it was killed off by the usual agitators.
The electoral defeat should have led to complete revamp of the PN’s ideological underpinnings, but I don’t see it happening.
As same as he may appear to be, racist remarks are never the conclusions reached by a rational mind. Racism is rooted in the most bestial of human emotions, namely fear: fear of the unknown, fear of not having enough for everyone, fear of change, fear of losing one’s identity.
Nobody ever said that crazy people are necessarily stupid.
I believe he worked for BOV not Mid-Med.
I met Norman Lowell too a few times quite a while ago. I don’t think he’s mentally ill, and he is definitely not gay.
[Daphne – What astonishing lack of insight. He’s not mentally ill? Because that’s normal behaviour…When I read things like this, I am not surprised people were literally UNABLE to read Joseph Muscat’s body language and speech patterns, all of which screamed ‘fraud’.]
While I reject his worldview as, in my opinion it is based on faulty premises, I also recognize that, if you do accept such premises, his conclusions are largely inevitable. He genuinely believes in what he says and while most people including myself would reject the belligerence and distasteful diatribes, it is also a fact that he is not alone. His worldview is shared by many far right groups around the world.
As for the embezzlement issue, he says that he was framed. I really don’t know what the truth is, but one thing’s for sure – he doesn’t live as if he has a lifetime stash of dosh tucked away in a safe place. Sometimes I think that the only reason he gives his speeches is to get the free food and drinks, otherwise he would never afford them.
[Daphne – He wasn’t framed. He was lucky to escape prison.]
I once heard how he did it (the embezzlement) but I’d better refrain from disclosing it, lest someone working at a bank gives it a try. Because, if you are a crook, you may easily get away with it.
He wouldn’t be the first person with a first class brain to be mentally ill.
Bad not mad which is worse.
That was BOV, I remember his at the Paola branch when I was young, at that time my dad was the branch manager there, he always had an admiration towards Nazi ideology.
It’s true that he’s intelligent, but so was Hitler.
He did not work for Mid Med Bank.
[Daphne – Yes, that’s right. Bank of Valletta.]
H.P. Baxxter,
I never said that Norman Lowell IS actually gay – all I am saying is that those are the vibes he gives off, at least to a woman.
Concerning my “nutcase” comment – what would you call someone whom you do not know from Adam and who picks you out of a crowd of people you’re socialising with, approaches you, and within a couple of minutes into the conversation starts ranting and raving against certain races, and certain categories of people and calling them all names under the sun?
Yes, that is my opinion of him. Do you blame me?
I believe he worked at BOV not at MIid-Med Bank.
“He is neither gay and nor mentally ill.”
Neither is he the Zarathustrian Ubermensch that he believes himself to be.
Unless I am mistaken, Norman was employed with Bank of Valletta
Norman Lowell does NOT have a first class brain, nor is he particularly bright, well read or even reasonably well informed.
His fantasy of creating an elitist paradise where the privileged live an exalted existence and look out from the castle ramparts onto a forested land populated by wild boar is beyond ridiculous. And why does he imagine that he would be counted among the elite?
I’m no psychiatrist, so I cannot tell if Lowell is pathologically unbalanced or not. But it seems to me that he is no more insane than Emmy Bezzina and Franco Debono. Yet the latter holds public office, and both are practising lawyers.
[Daphne – Your comparisons are most apt. Both of them are unstable, and both use their instability to put themselves in the limelight. And Bezzina is Lowell’s lawyer.]
He is also no more camp than Joseph Muscat. Yet the latter is our prime minister.
Some of our most revered academics seem to have severe cases of Asperger’s Syndrome or worse. All in all, I’d say Lowell was average, by Maltese standards.
I wouldn’t say that Lowell has a pleasant personality. But given a choice between a dinner party with him, or a fellow conspiracy theorist like Kevin Ellul Bonici, I’d choose the former any time. Given the choice between Lowell and a pompous old fart like Manuel Mallia, or indeed just a boring old fart like Leo Brincat, I’d choose Lowell. Between the demagogue Lowell and a smug git like Andrew Azzopardi, again I’d go for the former.
[Daphne – I certainly wouldn’t. I have always found Norman Lowell (this long before he became notorious, when he was a permanent fixture on the Sliema front, accosting people he knew or knew of) to be frightening and unnerving, and I am not easily frightened or unnerved. There is something deeply disturbing about him. He gives it off in waves. I hasten to add that this was LONG before he discovered Africans and racism as a fast route to notoriety. I had no idea what his political or racism views way and I still had him down as scary.]
At least he doesn’t interrupt you while speaking, and can write proper sentences, which is more than can be said for most of our celebrated household names. Perhaps the thing that struck me most about him is that he never treated me with the condescension to which I am used.
Then again, I seem to have spent my life surrounded by loathsome society looking down its nose at me, and Lowell seems mild in comparison. But that’s just me.
@Daphne
I know what you mean Daphne. By normal standards he does not *act* sane. But keep in mind, as I said, that his starting premises are not the same as yours or mine.
There are religious preachers (including catholic ones) who act every bit as eccentric as he does, but they are not considered mad and I guess that by his standards, he is indeed on a kind of evangelical mission.
[Daphne – I do not base my assessment of his psychological stability on his arguments, but on his behaviour.]
Once all is said and done however, it all boils down to what you mean by “mentally ill” and frankly, not even the experts can agree between themselves sometimes.
Is racism a mental illness? Is being an extreme right-wing adherent and a Hitler fan a mental illness? From the Liberal point of view it probably is, but ideologues are always quick to tar their opponents with the insanity brush.
[Daphne – Being consumed by irrational hatred for other human beings and advocating sadism (that goes beyond racism) is, yes, a sign of psychological problems. It is quite normal to be angry and resentful against – and this is a useful comparison – a spouse who has left you for somebody else. But friends and family know when the anger has tipped into psychological problems (depression, obsession, whatever) when you begin to fixate, rant and talk about this whatever the subject of the conversation happens to be, or when the bitterness becomes all-consuming. That’s the difference.]
What I would really be interested in is as assessment from a purely clinical point of view. Would a psychiatrist be able to diagnose some concrete mental illness as opposed to sheer bloody-minded unadulterated evil? Is evil actually a mental illness in itself? I really don’t know – and I’m quite prepared to wager that neither do you or does anybody else.
[Daphne – Evil is an emotive word. People who commit evil routinely are generally psychopaths or sociopaths. This is not a mental illness so much as a state of being – in the sense that it can neither be cured nor treated. Lowell may well be a sociopath, but he is also unbalanced.]
Oh and … for the record … I *did* recognize Muscat for what he is since before he even ran for party leader so there.
[Daphne – I know you did, because we discussed it here. That wasn’t a reference to you.]
Daphne,
Lowell worked for BOV and not for Mid Med Bank. I can vouch for that since I too worked at BOV.
[Daphne – Yes, thank you. Others have pointed it out several times already.]
All I’m saying is that, on personality alone, Lowell is no worse than many of those of his countrymen who are considered perfectly respectable, or indeed virtuous.
Goes to show how Maltese society is disastrously incapable of weeding out the chaff.
The freaks have taken over. Why, we even had a string of them as prime ministers, with a few presidents thrown in for good measure.
You have summed up almost perfectly the political souls of Malta’s two main parties although I would change it slightly:
Catholic Labour (PN) and Nasserist Fascism (MLP)
Congratulations for picking that out.
HP, usually dream dinner-party guests aren’t people who make you want to slit your wrists or stick a fork in the nearest electric point.
My dream Maltese dinner party would consist of Daphne (of course), Harry (what else are friends for) and then we hit a wall. Antoine Camilleri’s dead. So is Charles Camilleri. I’d probably have to make do with Ira Losco for after-dinner japes. I’d have young Matthew Camilleri too although I’d end up feeling inadequate. Oh and Richard England for a bit of gravitas. I wouldn’t mind Nicholas de Piro too.
Whenever contradicted, his brain jerks. Not a good sign.
Delusional isn’t intelligent, just watch him struggling with ‘alta cultura’. Then there’s his vitiated reasoning, anything outside his limited knowledge renders him a spluttering imbecile.
‘Action painting’ on restricted canvas, small enough to take it all in at arm’s length betrays utter fear of the unkown.
“plurimultikulturizmu…il- pluralizmu…..multiculturalism”
He does not even know what he is saying any longer.
But did he ever?
He has quite a fetish for Italian loanwords for an anti-multiculturalist.
What an idiot. I hoped that the car at 0:38 was about to hit him.
Ruddy waste of space.
Anyone told him he looks Jewish?
Norman Lowenberg.
Watching the clip again….way too entertaining.
“Ghidilna speech, Norman” – How about a Debonesque reply such as “Mela jiena l-pappagall tieghek?”
Oh no… Not Norman Lowell! He has clearly sunk to depths that I thought he would never reach.
Perhaps its the push-back issue? He was clearly tanked up with quite enough vino, as evidenced by the whine in his voice, and the fact that he was not even as semi-coherent as he usually is.
But let’s give him the benefit of the doubt and assume he way on his way to practice some Dionysian Action painting.
Norman Lowell? “Presente!” … Definitely not this time round.
How ridiculous. What’s wrong with the people who take him seriously?
Do you mean that section of bored upper class (compared to the ‘new Middle Class’) that organised the Norman Lowell parties years back and whose advertising was omnipresent on Malta Today during the election campaign?
Oh my what a threat to our identity! 0.6% of the population aren’t up to Lowell’s standards. What a stupid narcissist.
http://www.maltatoday.com.mt/en/newsdetails/news/national/2011-census-counts-2-676-sub-Saharan-Africans-20130721
The way I see it, most of the population is not up to Lowell’s standards…..
Nobody is up to a narcissist’s standard.
You mean down to Lowell’s standards.
Well, there is an old theory which says that homophobia comes from repressed homosexual, maybe he also has the genes of a black man. Anywhere else in Europe he would certainly not be seen as belonging to his beloved Aryan race.
He’s had too much to drink.
Miskin. Miskin. Miskin.
Did someone tell Lowell that he’s good looking? Just asking.
Daphne Norman Lowell was in the employ of Bank of Valletta. He has a very sound mind and is very intelligent. I believe he loves to be different in order to stand out.
[Daphne – He is either of sound mind and relentlessly playing a part, or he is not of sound mind. People of sound mind do not think, talk and behave that way. Also, I have lived in Malta long enough to know that the Maltese definition of intelligence is different to the accepted norm. It has very little to do with the mix of IQ and of ’emotional intelligence’ that forms the normal basis for assessment. Several people who taken by the general public to be intelligent, because of a number of factors to do with cunning, impressive behaviour, and so on, are actually not bright at all. Manuel Mallia is one of them. A sharp witness can be streets ahead of him in court.]
Norman Lowell has the unshakeable self confidence of the deranged. He does not impress because he is intelligent. He impresses because his admirers are not. Ironically, it’s because they’re undiscerning that they admire him so much. He certainly isn’t up to the standards if superiority that he professes.
Which is why he surrounds himself with the those he despises. He never got over the incident at BOV. Even because rumour has it he was let off when the investigation went beyond him.
That left him the scapegoat.
He walked into a restaurant in Birgu once, accompanied by one angry young man, tried to strike up conversation with a table full of youngsters.
All he managed was one of the girls shooing him off like she would a dog.
He appears to be what I would call ‘affected’.
All this talk about the purity of one’s race, Lowell is hardly Borg. With all that sun on his skin he could easily be mistaken for one from the Maghreb.
Plastered
Framed? Not enough proof for criminal proceedings? Norman Lowell was charged with embezzlement of a vast sum of money, but the court proceedings could not be concluded properly because the court file “went missing”.
In this video, he’s clearly had a drink, or five, too many.
Any suggestions that he could be gay are way off the mark.
[Daphne – That’s right. The file went ‘missing’. The case did actually go to court. It’s all coming back to me now, including the name of the lawyer who was suspected of sneaking it out.]
If Norman Lowell is allowed to run for MEP – he’ll secure a seat for sure.
Mrs. Mizzi has managed to solve the Europe-wide migration problem by simply meeting with some ‘ambassadors accredited to Nigeria’ and insisting on ‘the need for the creation of a better future for African youths in Africa’.
How come nobody thought of this years ago?
http://www.timesofmalta.com/articles/view/20130723/local/create-a-better-future-for-african-youths-in-africa-marlene-mizzi.479221
[Daphne – What astonishing lack of insight. He’s not mentally ill? Because that’s normal behaviour…When I read things like this, I am not surprised people were literally UNABLE to read Joseph Muscat’s body language and speech patterns, all of which screamed ‘fraud’.]
I really agree with you – I ask people: but don’t you think Muscat looks “fake”? That’s the word. For me he’s a fake and a fraud.
I try to look at him with other eyes, from another point of view but I simply do not manage to do so.
Am I so blinded by my political passion? I don’t think so. But I really do feel that JM is a fraud. Everything about him is so fake. Even his posture during public meetings, for example. He is not relaxed, confident.
I used to compare Gonzi and his body language to Muscat and his body language. There is absolutely no comparison. One is relaxed, confident and open – that’s the word – “open” – whilst the other is very closed and tense. His eyes hardly ever smile whilst Gonzi has a genuine smile.
I do not want this to be a political remark but a human remark.
I come across tens of different people in my everyday life and I can classify them easily as “frauds” and “genuines” (allow me the use of the word). Muscat is certainly a fraud.
Why? It is something I feel, something I read in him. I cannot stop asking myself: how come others can’t see it too? It is so damn obvious. I know otherwise-intelligent and savvy people who have been fooled.
This is for me one of the most seriously worrying aspects of the last election.
Maltese culture prizes sucking up to your interlocutor or audience.
And Joseph Muscat is the ultimate brown-noser. He’ll suck up to anyone. He did it to the extreme right, to Kenneth Zammit Tabona, to the gay community, to environmentalists, to the insecure, to the liberals, to the corrupt, to the honest, to everyone.
Why do you think Daphne is despised by almost everyone in Malta? Because she stands her ground and doesn’t suck up to her audience. This is the Great Divide between the Two Maltas. It’s Xarabank (suck up to the audience and get max applause) vs Stephen Fry’s QI (put a British audience in its place and you’ll gain their admiration and respect).
Lawrence Gonzi, it pains me to say, has always sucked up to his audience of moaners and leeches. He was only ever passionate about one thing – social policy. And it shows. I found his personality deeply unattractive, but then I’m not exactly Mr Favourite Fost Il-Maltin. I don’t expect mine to be the majority view.
Baxxter, why don’t you just stand up straight and say it like you mean it. (sic)
I’ve always assumed Norman Lowell is gay. I wouldn’t have considered it worthy of note, except for the fact that he goes out of his way to foment hatred against minorities.
Norman is not a fruit fairy, just a little camp.
I would say his character make-up is part Dalek, part Captain Birdseye and part Lionel Blair.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lklk5TYBAAI
http://daphnecaruanagalizia.com/2009/03/how-normans-file-went-missing-the-screws-went-first/